


A Good Man is Hard to Find

by airafleeza



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Hurt No Comfort, Identity Porn, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Pining, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-13 14:57:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7980715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airafleeza/pseuds/airafleeza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t understand why you call yourself a bad man,” he says against the soldier’s neck, squeezing his middle.</p><p>“Because I wound up here. The things I’ve done,” the soldier lists. “Because he didn’t come for me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Man is Hard to Find

**Author's Note:**

> The concept for this fic is around two years old, after I got heavily into the comics and read TWS arc with Bucky and Natasha going after the other Winter Soldiers. After CA:CW was released, I felt like I'd found the missing piece of inspiration and managed to finish this. I'm still horribly slow at editing, unfortunately. Further elaboration can be found on my end notes.
> 
> I've never written anything like this, so I hope you all enjoy. Even when I'm not writing Stucky, know I'm still #stuckytrash #stucky4life.
> 
> This was mostly self-beta. Any and all mistakes are my own. Major thanks to [Kami](http://msaether.tumblr.com) for reading this over, and reminding me to post.

The day he meets the soldier, a vague wave of disappointment passes him. He’s heard the stories, and still he knows— real monsters don’t exist. Dmitri isn’t a child. The closest thing to a monster that he’s ever seen looked like everyone else. The monsters in this life learn how to smile.

The man before Dmitri does not smile. He is thin and broken. His hair is wet and hanging down into his face, empty expression lowered in the presence of authority. Handler at his side, scientists at Dmitri’s, and the legend Dmitri’s heard about looks like he’s lost in his head— as if he can escape that way. Maybe that’s what he’s learned in this hellhole, Dmitri ponders. Maybe it’s his only escape left. The soldier is nothing like the rumors say, or the shadow he has cast.

In Russian they tell Dmitri he is to be trained by the soldier. There is no room to argue— not that he would. Dmitri knows what he signed up for, and is not the kind of man to back out due to uncertainty on his own behalf. For a comrade, perhaps. But he has never been kind to himself. He never learned how.

There are eyes on him, he realizes, and when he locks sights with the soldier, it’s like there are only two of them in the entire room, the entire world. 

 

* * *

 

That night, the soldier does not kiss him. He startles when Dmitri touches his back in a way that did not invite combat, and the soldier looks in surprise as Dmitri’s fingers move in circles between his shoulder blades. Dmitri had asked to speak to the silent man alone, to have a moment to know his trainer before they got to work. Soon doctors would begin administering their serum once his combat training was up to par, he knew. Years of idle work had left his body not quite military grade. The two were left standing in the vacant eating hall.

The soldier rolls his shoulders back, joints cracking. Still watching Dmitri. There's a hint of terror in the soldier's gaze at the man with more free will than he has. And— something else. Hot and angry. Enough to make Dmitri curious.

Dmitri hushes him, leaning in. The motion forces the soldier to back into the table, his arm flying to Dmitri’s shoulder in a steadying response. But the pressure of his hand on Dmitri’s shoulder stays and becomes a suggestion: _fall to your knees_. The soldier’s lips part, watching again— eyes focused and harder than before. Dmitri imagines how warm the soldier’s breath would be on his neck and willingly goes down, hastily undoing the other man’s pants, hungry to see what other reactions he might elicit.

The soldier does not make a sound when Dmitri takes him into his mouth, or when he comes. The soldier watches in wonder, even when Dmitri spits off to the side and sits back on his heels. Quickly buttoning up his own pants, the soldier hauls Dmitri up by his collar, looking a little wild before maneuvering him around. With Dmitri’s ass now the one shoved against the table, the soldier presses his hand low, resting on Dmitri’s stomach until Dmitri understands what the soldier was asking permission for and brought the soldier’s right hand lower to cup his erection over his pants.

As they finish, the soldier still hasn’t said a word.

 

* * *

 

Bodies pressed against each other, Dmitri sandwiched between the small give of the mat and the hardness in the body on top of his— this was a sensation soon consistently taken out of the gym. Suspicious eyes shifted soon after their arrangement started, which resulted with the two of them sneaking around. Closets, the bathrooms, occasionally Dmitri’s quarters when the soldier felt like slipping into his room through the window. Like teenagers in love, Dmitri could laugh until he realized very well the soldier was once young and capable of such a thing. The remnants of a handsome face were still there.

Dmitri isn’t sure what he expected, after that first meeting, but with every sparring session, he could feel the soldier’s bodily reactions to his, even if his face didn’t show it. Perfectly schooled into blankness before Dmitri couldn’t help himself and dragged the soldier down without an excuse. Why the soldier chose him, what started it— Dmitri does not know the answers to these questions. Yet when he thinks back to the intensity of that first look, all tension in the soldier’s stringy and strained muscles and he doesn’t know how else this was supposed to end without taking the soldier inside him.

The soldier doesn’t fuck exactly like he fights. Dmitri would use “fast” and “efficient” for both— he’s never come so hard in his life— but there are encounters when the soldier takes his time. Times when they’re both wound up and the soldier is too rough. Those bruises take a little too long to heal. Over time it changes, and when the soldier doesn’t ease up, he at least has the sense to kiss it better. Either way, Dmitri doesn’t mind.

“You could always talk to me,” Dmitri mentions, the soldier lying on his back next to him. Lingering and naked, in a rare moment. Dmitri wishes he had a cigarette to give him. He sees the way the soldier’s fingers twitch, like they ache for something else— not a gun. He’s confident the soldier used to smoke, even if the man himself replies with a, “I’m not sure” when asked. Dmitri recognizes the signs from his father’s own addiction. “We don’t have to fuck it out.”

The soldier sighs, so annoyed and so human that Dmitri wouldn’t have thought him capable of such a thing two weeks ago. “I don’t hear you complaining.”

Dmitri chuckles. “No, I suppose not.”

The fact is, the soldier has been at his side more often than not. They train viciously, Dmitri receiving more breaks for meals, which he suspects are better than what the soldier gets— skinny and gaunt as he is. He knows the soldier has other missions, but as time passes, each one leaves the soldier more shaken. It's like the soldier is having layers stripped away, the person that's underneath becoming a bit more visible with every passing moment. Dmitri does not think so highly of himself that their sleeping together has some sort of correlation with this change.

Through those moments he learns: while they both were soldiers (it was easy to recognize the discipline, the steady hand), this was not the war this soldier had signed up for. They were not the same, and Dmitri doesn’t know what went wrong for the man next to him.

In a second of raw sympathy, Dmitri rolls over, half on-top of the soldier. He kisses his shoulder, the metal one, even if the soldier claims not to be able to feel it. His tongue grazes the scar seam just past the metal, on his collar bone. It makes the man under him shiver.

Then, the soldier does something Dmitri doesn’t expect: he speaks in English. American accent impeccable, better than Dmitri’s by far. The soldier sounds bitter and exhausted, despite the harsh chuckle he ends with.

“It was a saying— can’t remember the name of the man who told me that,” he confesses, continuing in English. “But he was a funny sort of sonuvabitch.”

“What does it mean?” Dmitri asks in the same language, unfamiliar with the phrase. He lifts his head to look at the soldier.

“ _No rest for the wicked_.” The soldier switches to Russian again, expression neutral as he stares off. “It would explain why I’m so tired.”

 

* * *

 

Sex and sleeping in a bed together are two separate things, rarely overlapping. Both would be punishable, they know, but one leaves them exposed for longer periods of time. One suggests lust, which is excusable, but the other reveals affection.

The first time the soldier fell asleep in his presence was an accident that Dmitri was unable to appreciate, exhausted as he was from a tiring day. The next time, Dmitri watched. With his eyes closed, the soldier looked younger. Careful, Dmitri brushed his hair back and the soldier turned his face into Dmitri’s palm. It delighted him, this unconscious act of tenderness, until he caught the name the soldier was muttering. It was no one that Dmitri knew in camp, and when Dmitri asked him later on, the soldier didn’t appear to recognize the name either.

 

* * *

 

“I’d heard about you, you know,” Dmitri confesses, one day. The soldier is half dressed. It’s daylight, the sun’s reflection on the snow outside the facility making the room even brighter. “Outside these walls.”

The soldier doesn’t pause, only bends down to grab his pants and work them up his thighs. A quiet, “is that so?” comes from him. He straightens his spine to button them, and Dmitri’s eyes fall to the back that is turned to him as the soldier watches the door and finishes dressing.

“Just rumors I heard while in the military.” Sprawled out on the bed, Dmitri tucks his hands beneath his head, propping himself just enough that he can still get a view. The looseness that comes from sex fails to last long on the soldier. Dmitri can see it in his stiff soldiers and tight back. He wonders how much it hurts, but doesn’t bother to ask if he too will know some of that pain.

He’s nearly to peak condition, the medical staff speak above him. The days until they begin administering the serum are short, as far as he’s concerned. They tell him fewer things nowadays, as though Dmitri is less of a person. As if they own him. One day, Dmitri knows, they will remember they do not. Staring at their soldier now, he does not look forward to that day.

“Sometimes I can’t believe it, that I’ve been given this chance,” Dmitri carries on. And shit— the soldier freezes. Dmitri back tracks. “To be of use—”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” the soldier interrupts, then soft— as if walls can hear: “I don’t even know if we’re the good guys.” It’s the first time Dmitri has heard the soldier state such an opinion and it gives him pause.

The soldier is fully-clothed and leaves to report to his handlers. When Dmitri has gone to find him, to ask what he had meant, Dmitri is told that the soldier was receiving recalibration. His first thoughts go to the soldier’s left arm. He thinks nothing else of it.

 

* * *

 

The program was demanding, but Dmitri figured himself prepared. When meeting with the team behind the Winter Soldier project, soon after his commanding officers spoke to him about volunteering, they smiled when they saw his credentials. His military service and recommendations. Dmitri had no family, no child or wife. They did not question the latter, had no suspicions at all, but rather focused on the fact he had was already fluent in half a dozen languages. Boarding school, being an orphan— they did not say it with as many words, but Dmitri was the perfect candidate. Loyal, a leader. “We have plans for you,” they promised, and Dmitri’s chest swelled with pride.

He wanted to be useful, to further a good cause.

The soldier doesn’t remember him. He is shaky, his hair smells burnt. After working on the mats and dealing with those blank eyes, Dmitri manages to corner him in the showers. He isn’t sure if he’s imagining the gaze of the soldier’s handlers, who used to never accompany them during their sparring sessions, but now they bore into them. He’s just grateful they don’t follow them into the shower.

“What happened?” Dmitri demands, and the soldier looks sick, brow scrunched and confused. His mouth tastes like blood when Dmitri kisses him, pulling his clothes off gently. The soldier seems to understand and lets him, opens his mouth again and runs his own tongue over Dmitri’s bottom lip. The water isn’t very hot, the bathroom tile even colder. Dmitri’s hand stays above the waist— the soldier’s cock limp between his legs. Still, the soldier presses him for more kisses.

“It’s alright,” Dmitri promises. Any longer spent in here and Dmitri doesn’t doubt the soldier’s handlers will come and check on them and turn Dmitri into a liar. For Dmitri, it’s decidedly not okay. None of this. Something is terribly wrong, and the soldier knew something of it before whatever this is happened.

That’s when the objective changes. Dmitri starts to realize what his purpose ought to be. It no longer involves working for these people.

 

* * *

 

Most of their interactions turn into glances across hallways, one leaving the room and one entering it. The soldier is to train the other candidates, they tell him. There is a point where he wonders: does the soldier even remember him? Only days later does he sneak into Dmitri’s room, from the outside window. He sits at the end of the bed, silent and in the dark. Dmitri can’t help lean forward to touch him, ensure that he is real.

“You remind me of someone,” the soldier says.

Initially, his thought is, “yes, you know me”, but that isn’t the case. It’s something deeper, the thing that brought him onto the soldier’s radar in the first place. It has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the name Dmitri had heard the soldier mutter in his sleep.

“You lost someone,” Dmitri tells him helpfully. And the soldier nods, unable to remember just like before, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? Somewhere in the patchwork that is the soldier’s mind, there was someone once. At the beginning of the story, when he had a name to give to others. He was more than this.

“You said a name when you were sleeping, once,” Dmitri continues. “We were in bed together. You had fallen asleep. Do you remember that? Do you want to know what that name was?”

Nothing else is said. Dmitri accepts it, understanding that in this situation, yes and no are more complicated than they should be.

 

* * *

 

They give the program candidates little packages— small pleasures that Dmitri hasn’t had in months, not since entering this facility. Cigarettes and a chocolate bar. Soap that smells nice and doesn’t burn when he shaves. Incentives, he thinks, as the date looms closer. They are to start administering the serum next week. Dmitri will be the first of several.

The soldier doesn’t realize he knows how to smoke until Dmitri offers him one. They are in the bathroom with the door locked and fan on. Here he holds his cigarette like a natural, between his lips and inhaling without coughing once. He looks satisfied in a way Dmitri has never seen. Better than sex, the soldier’s face reads. He relaxes substantially. Dmitri feels himself want, and the soldier catches his eye.

The two are more cautious, nothing more since the kiss in the showers. The soldier hasn’t seemed interested in anything further, a strange broken heart look on his face whenever left to his own thoughts. But now Dmitri wants him, and not because he’s there and someone to fuck around with. He wants to taste the smoke in his lungs, make sure his mouth doesn’t taste like blood anymore. Because out of everyone here, the soldier is a better man, despite what the he tried to tell Dmitri before being made to forget. Because unlike some of the boys in boarding school who fooled around with whatever was convenient, Dmitri preferred boys to girls for as long as he could remember.

 _Are you like me?_ he wonders, surprised to hear the soldier respond. Dmitri wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud.

“I think you know the answer for that better than I do.” On his face, the soldier puts on a grin, but there’s no heat. Only muscle memory, a faint sensation that years ago it could have been a promise— a thrill to eat someone alive. Dmitri doubts the man before him now would have the stomach for such things, the appetite for it.

Shifting, Dmitri moves in front of him from where they sit on the floor.

“Remember that you love him,” Dmitri says, staring into the soldier’s face. Close enough to be able to tell the soldier is holding his breath. “If you lose that, you'll have nothing.”

“I don’t—” the soldier rebuts automatically, until he stops. He looks to the side, like he’s remembering something. “I don’t… I didn’t love him like that.”

Dmitri frowns, unconvinced. “Did he look like me?”

The soldier’s eyes flick to Dmitri’s blonde hair, cut short. Military grade, as it’s always been. He could never handle anything any longer, not since he was a boy. Dmitri steps closer, until the soldier drops his cigarette. Dmitri picks it up and rubs it out. In this close proximity, the soldier has to face him.

“You can pretend I’m him, if you want,” he offers.

Despite his arguments against it, that things weren’t like that, the soldier does not hesitate to pull Dmitri close, kissing him with a fury. Because time ran out for them, and is running out for the soldier and Dmitri now. Love isn’t a pleasure either of these men could afford in this situation, but longing is another story. They both ache for separate reasons. He is fond of the soldier, may even adore him. It wouldn’t be fair to expect the same from the man who touches him now with trembling hands. Different hands from the ones that twist his arm when they spar, or bandage him up later. The ones that force the orgasm out of his body or hold his legs apart as the soldier opens him.

No, these hands are light pressure, even his left one. The soldier is careful and frustrating. Dmitri wants more and feels sorry that he is a poor substitute, but not sorry because he’s never seen the soldier like this.

Pulling back early from a kiss is a disappointment, until the soldier murmurs into Dmitri’s neck that he wants Dmitri to fuck him, which was never on the table before. They stand, unzipping and pulling down enough clothes to get efficient skin. Dmitri spits into his hand, hoping it’s enough to make the friction less painful as he opens the soldier, who braces himself against the wall. There is no sound, quiet like their first time. It’s only after they’ve moved to the ground, both satiated and clinging to one another, softening cock inside the soldier, that the soldier speaks in English, the same phrase Dmitri had heard before.

“I don’t understand why you call yourself a bad man,” he says against the soldier’s neck, squeezing his middle.

“Because I wound up here. The things I’ve done,” the soldier lists. “Because he didn’t come for me.”

 

* * *

 

They are found just this way— wrapped around each other, an unmistakable lover’s embrace. When the soldier’s handlers take him, they hit Dmitri for the first time— what he also swears will be their last. Freedoms are revoked. Dmitri is moved to a room on an underground lower level until the day he’s to receive his first treatment. He doubts he’ll see the soldier again as long as they’re in this facility.

They promise to cure him— make good great. Unlike the soldier, they promise, with a string of slurs, ones that would make Dmitri flinch if he wasn’t so angry. He wants to kill them, all of them, because he’s aware of what’s happening now: the soldier is being reset again, however they do it. _Recalibrated_ , they’d called it before. The walls are thick iron, but he swears he can hear screams in the distance.

Dmitri knows he’ll use the strength these doctors have given him and escape. He’ll bring the soldier with him. Against the rest of the world, just they could take them on.

**Author's Note:**

> In the comics, I was really intrigued by the relationship of the two Winter Soldiers— [Bucky and Dmitri](http://66.media.tumblr.com/6b25f0d01e5117c02e67f334eb78a73b/tumblr_inline_n29g72PCHY1qehq1k.png)— especially when it was mentioned that Dmitri had a lot of Steve-like qualities. That's where the idea of this started. 
> 
> In the movie, I imagine Dmitri to be the [main Winter Soldier](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcinematicuniverse/images/4/43/Josef.png) we see in the Russian facility. It didn't seem to be that large of a stretch, so I went with it and was able to finish this fic. If you just ignore the fact he's named Josef according to the credits, and that on closer examination his hair is more of a light brown, it's a perfect fit. #bs
> 
> Title is taken from Flannery O'Connor's amazing short story, under the same name.


End file.
